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Bill to ban bots impersonating people for telemarketing and influencing election
- darawk 8y agoI'm all for this...but can we just ban telemarketing entirely? Why is that even allowed? I've always thought that the law should be written such that telemarketing is legal, but if you engage in it, it is no longer illegal to murder you. You can do it, but you lose your murder protection.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- earbrazier 8y agoI've heard that robocalls are illegal in Germany. It would be difficult to pass a law banning them in the United States because the people writing the laws are themselves heavy users of robocalls as a part of their election campaigns.
- petepete 8y agoThey are illegal in the UK too, but the law doesn't stop calls coming in from abroad or from marketing companies routing through throwaway UK SIP providers. I'd just like to see phone companies made to have a free option where customers can turn off all calls from unidentifiable/withheld numbers. That would be easy to implement and stop a lot of the problem.
- giancarlostoro 8y agoI never answer a call if the number is not saved on my phone. If it's truly important leave a voicemail, I will get back to you if I have to.
- petepete 8y agoI was referring to landlines but yes, on mobile, I agree entirely. The more recent Android dialer correctly identifies spam most times.
- giancarlostoro 8y agoWe ditched our land line about 10 years ago so I totally forgot about that. Although I remember having one of those phones that had the digital address book on it, maybe you have a different model. Also I have T-Mobile and it tells me when a caller is "likely a scammer" and they even let me outright block those callers.
- pcmaffey 8y agoYeah I recently permanently set my phone to Do Not Disturb, which blocks all calls from people not in my favorites. It’s been great
- 0xfeba 8y agoYep pretty much the same here. I just leave it on vibrate. I have been getting more and more spam calls though, I should try DnD. I think ringtones are distracting and totally unnecessary, with a few exceptions. My phone is either in my pocket, or on my desk nearby to where I'll see it ring. I don't understand people who leave it on loud at work (or worse, leave it on loud then leave the phone at their desk). It's really inconsiderate. They are probably oblivious though, without someone mentioning it to them.
- hackermailman 8y agoIn Canada political campaigns will rent from allied political parties in the US their robocall army to escape domestic laws. A favorite trick now is to relentlessly phone at annoying hours and impersonate the rival "Stay on the line for an important message from (insert rival politician)" in hopes they anger you enough to not vote for said rival.
- BonesJustice 8y agoIt’s already illegal to place robocalls to cell phones (under TCPA). It’s also illegal to robodial any number on the Do Not Call list, but unlike the TCPA, there is a carve out for political campaigning. Thanks, Congress! Of course, neither does much good when the laws are nearly impossible to enforce. Thanks to caller ID spoofing, it’s usually impossible to tell who actually called you, so good luck collecting damages.
- pc86 8y agoIf you really wanted to find out you could just ask the phone company, they know the real number/identity of the person calling you, or at the very least a layer deeper than caller ID. It's not like caller ID spoofing makes you anonymous.
- BonesJustice 8y agoI think there are privacy regulations that prevent the phone company from deanonymizing a caller without a warrant. Or at least that’s the excuse I’ve heard cited before.
- bluGill 8y agoIf you are on the do not call list a warrant SHOULD be easy to get though.
- nkrisc 8y agoIt should at least require that a human initiates and terminates every single call.
- jrockway 8y agoWhat does that mean, exactly? Does the human have to whistle the DTMF frequencies into a handset to initiate the call, or can they use a machine that generates those tones when buttons are pressed? Can a machine automatically press the buttons? If so, how is that different from what is allowed today?
- undersuit 8y agoSome big wigs in Hollywood have locked down 99% of our devices so that we can't copy their HD video. I'm pretty sure most of us realize that actually limiting calls to only humans is strictly impossible, but what about getting it to about 99% human with some offenders that we can sue in court.
- nkrisc 8y agoFair enough, I could have been more specific. Instead of a dialer calling vast quantities of people and a telemarketer only connecting to the calls that actually go through, the telemarketer should be required to initiate the call (through whatever interface), wait to see if the recipient picks up, and then choose to end the call when they see fit. The point is to allow telemarketing but to keep it a fair and symmetrical affair. One person calling one other person as opposed to me being on the receiving end of hundreds of auto-dialed calls while the telemarketers only have to spend their time with the calls that succeed.
- tomc1985 8y agoThis is probably not the place to nitpick comments for legalese If I had my way the only legal phone call is one that begins and ends with a one-on-one conversation with a human, preferably one which the receiver has already met
- Retric 8y ago> Can a machine automatically press the buttons? No. What's hard about this, if a person presses a button that can cause 1 and only one call. You also can't have a machine listen to see if someone picks up then hand off to a person because a human was not listing at the start of the call.
- trumped 8y agoWhile you're at it, ban Spam endorsed by the federal government (USPS)... junk mailers even get rebates to fill up your mailbox.
- jermaustin1 8y agoWhile they are at it, also get rid of the spam car and debt consolidation loan mailers. If you opt-out, you also don't get mailers from AmEx on their newest metallic card, which I might want. But I don't need a loan from some unknown institution at near credit-card rates.
- Sohcahtoa82 8y agoI used to get snail mail almost daily from SoFi trying to get me to refinance my student loans with them. It was really annoying, especially since they wouldn't match my credit union's rates, despite my 810+ credit score. I wonder how much it cost them to send all those mailers. It was at least one a week for a couple years before I finally went to their website to opt out.
- paulie_a 8y agoI've wanted to go full Kramer and "unsubscribe" from the USPS. I let my box fill up for weeks and then everything goes into the trash.
- TallGuyShort 8y agoI know you're joking, but I (jokingly) considered a law that if you're using your cell phone and are involved in an accident, that accident is your fault and you must pay in excess of actual damages. The problem is of course all the gray areas where there was some emergency, or the unintended side effects of people getting hurt who weren't just being douchebags in traffic.
- Shivetya 8y agopoliticians at the Federal level excluded themselves from similar rules along with charities. if we can get them to not exclude themselves we might have a chance at blocking everything
- matty22 8y agoWhile we're at it, could we make it illegal for companies to fill my physical mailbox with garbage? Junk mail is a blight on the planet. It's literally just turning trees into garbage with no intermediary step of added value.
- wilde 8y agoBecause calling people is an important GOTV activity. They’re not going to write a law that hurts their ability to campaign.
- MrQuincle 8y ago"with the intent to mislead the other person about its artificial identity for the purpose of knowingly deceiving the person about the content of the communication" What has the artificial identity to do with it? People are coming up with a lot of ways to restrict the freedom of our future artificial children. I'm not certain that's how we have to welcome AI to our world. 1. Ban on AI soldiers https://www.stopkillerrobots.org https://www.stopkillerrobots.org 2. Ban on AI sex workers https://campaignagainstsexrobots.org/about/ https://campaignagainstsexrobots.org/about/ 3. Open letter to deny AI the status of legal person: http://www.robotics-openletter.eu http://www.robotics-openletter.eu If this is a bill to make sure that bots are not allowed to perform criminal acts that are criminal to humans, this is very reasonable. However, this bill is different: * It criminalizes impersonation in a particular context; * It is restricted to bots; * It is about deceiving someone wrt the contents of the conversation. It's not coherent. I hope AI will be forgiving us when they enter the world...
- genericacct 8y agoStep in the right direction, Calfornia
- pteredactyl 8y agoIt sounds good, yes.
- riffic 8y agoThe Electronic Frontier Foundation didn't think so: https://www.eff.org/document/eff-letter-opposing-california-bot-disclosure-bill-sb-1001-first-amendment-concerns https://www.eff.org/document/eff-letter-opposing-california-...
- kmlx 8y agoI've been wanting to build an online-only bot of myself for some time. This bot would impersonate me and interact with any service provided over the internet, such as banks, government, even ordering a cab. It could both write and speak just as well as I do and would act on my behalf. I can handle potential issues personally. Would this scenario fall under this law?
- macawfish 8y agoCall me crazy, but I have this weird theory that maybe some of these spam calls could be a form of subtle psi-ops, in the vein of "hypernormalization", designed to exacerbate political prejudices. Think of "stochastic resonance". Its one of the few reasons I could think of for "blank" robo calls. They seem almost intentionally annoying, so my thought is that they could be designed to activate and prime irrational regional biases. For example, someone has been spoofing my number to call people in Alabama. I get about 5 calls back per day from 251 numbers!
- Khoth 8y ago> Its one of the few reasons I could think of for "blank" robo calls. Telephone spammer software dials a load of numbers, and when someone picks up, only then do they connect the call to a human on their end. It's why you often get a weird pause before they actually say anything, and if there happens not to be a human available you get a "blank" call.
- sjilo 8y agoThanks, Bill!
- sprokolopolis 8y agoI like the idea of this, but I wonder if it will have much impact on the worst offenders. The most frequent and annoying calls are almost always using spoofed numbers and many times originating from outside the country, like India. Is there any way that this law could be enforced... 1)on calls originating outside the state or country? 2) on calls over spoofed numbers?
- ethbro 8y agoAgreeing that a thing should be illegal is step 1. At minimum, it allows for prosecution of the most obvious offenders. And ultimately, money usually trickles back. Why would you be calling Californians if you didn't have an interest (business or otherwise) in California?
- Shivetya 8y agoSure there is means within the phone industry to determine if the number offered up is the actual number. Last I remember the caller id function was independent of the ANI information. Now calls are down to either my contact list or the caller leaving a message whose transcription I can review. All others just get ignored. It was bad enough when politicians wrote the laws in such a way their campaigns and charities did not have to have permission to call but with VOIP being abused so much my phone isn't my own. with regards to the political exception in calls, how will the Federal rule align with the state rule. it was specifically carved out to allow political calls in the do not call system
- pc86 8y agoGenerally speaking if there is a federal law explicitly allowing political calls of a given nature (e.g. robocalls over VOIP) a state law cannot disallow them. It depends on the exact wording of each, and the willingness of both parties to go to court. Even if it's illegal, that only matters when someone is willing to (literally) make a federal case over it.
- earbrazier 8y agoNo, not this law, because (contrary to the current HN title) it does not apply to telephone calls. Its scope is "any public-facing Internet Web site, Web application, or digital application, including a social network or publication".
- qwerty456127 8y agoI hate telemarketing, election influencing and political social network bots impersonating people altogether so it sounds great but doesn't this probably mean it is going to become illegal to build a chatbot, give it a human name and a [legally acquired] human face avatar? Will it actually affect telemarketing/political bots only?
- provolone 8y agoThe goal is not to make it illegal, just inaccessible for entities without an army of lawyers. AKA regulatory capture.
- vectorEQ 8y agobill to ban bots xD... and then suddenly the ability to identify them consistently and correctly apears out of the blue <3
- hannasanarion 8y agoYou're telling me you can't tell the difference between a person and a recording over the phone?
- komali2 8y agoThe article is more about Twitter bots and the like. I'm assuming this gives enough teeth to law enforcement for, say, Twitter to turn over records I sure hope it has on who is botting on their website.
- qwerty456127 8y agoBTW I have always wondered why do only the major political parties and their allies ever use bots for political influence. Obviously, real geeks could do much better at this if they would want and there probably are many gray/black hat hackers that would probably not hesitate for just moral/legal reasons but there still seems to be no bots that would try to influence something like the votes on net neutrality, ACTA/SOPA, the European Internet copyright law etc.
- pjc50 8y agoNot a lot of the influence stuff is actually "bots", much of it is simply low-wage humans from another country. Or Facebook ads. And maintaining a large enough pool of burner accounts is hard work or costs money.
- maxerickson 8y agoWhy do you think that "real geeks" aren't involved in existing influence campaigns?
- qwerty456127 8y agoBecause of the low quality. All the bots I've encountered were ridiculous. Like different "people" starting to follow me on Google+ (obviously intending to attract my attention so I would follow back) at the same moment and posting exactly the same (equal as string values) "thoughts" simultaneously. You can also find crowds of human-impersonating political bots posting exactly the same things on Twitter and in comments many times.
- maxerickson 8y agoOh, I would assume a "real geek" was responsible for any bot activity on G+ before I'd assume some big orgs had bothered.
- greeneggs 8y agoPerhaps this is for the same reason that Nigerian spammers can't spell? They are selecting for gullible targets. "Why Do Nigerian Scammers Say They are From Nigeria?" by Cormac Herley (WEIS, 2012) https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/why-do-nigerian-scammers-say-they-are-from-nigeria/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/why-do-...
- provolone 8y agoIf people are so easily swayed then perhaps they are just idiots? There are some cold & hard facts advocates of democracy need to look at. These problems can't be legislatively swept under the rug.
- puranjay 8y agoThe people who developed democracy never accounted for the weapons grade marketing and persuasion we are capable of today.
- sbarker 8y agoThey never accounted for flat earthers, but no amount persuasion or marketing is going to change my mind. Stupid is as stupid does.
- provolone 8y agoOh, I see. This time is different. Human nature has fundamentally changed. Anyways, I always read the flat earth argument as an exercise in rhetoric. From that perspective the outrage over it speaks volumes.
- ekianjo 8y agoWhat do you mean? Eloquence and persuasive methods have existed at least since Antiquity (just look at the records of Plato in Greece). What it takes to believe any kind of BS is just the absence of critical thinking. This is the real root cause.
- puranjay 8y agoI really doubt that pure eloquence can compete with the visual smorgasbord that modern marketers can create, all learned after spending billions on mass market advertising over decades. Plato couldn't laser-target his message to 5,000 different segments carefully curated with an extensive re-marketing campaign.
- 8y ago
- carbocation 8y agoI'm looking forward to the day when it's socially acceptable to simply not have a phone number. I think we're close.
- stuaxo 8y agoThis is a great start. Election Silence just before an polling is an interesting idea too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_silence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_silence
- BonesJustice 8y agoBit of a constitutional non-starter in the United States, though.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- brownbat 8y agoWe might jokingly call this the first bill against robot rights. To play robot devil's advocate... the future dystopia probably isn't a campaign driven by a fear of AI, but driven by a fear of programming in general, and skepticism towards anyone who is able to automate tasks and do things more efficiently. We all know the early history of the loom that birthed programmable machines, and how the community fought to destroy the machines. People were displaced from jobs, and that drove them in part. But people also get angry when anyone points out to them that there is an easier way to do something they've been doing the hard way. It's a well known psychological phenomenon known as "effort justification." Look at the post from yesterday full of stories of people being able to automate their job. When middle management found out, sometimes there was gratitude, but most often the reaction was fear or anger, firing them for insubordination despite showing how the company could save money. There's an 80s movie where Kevin Bacon is teaching a group of kids how to camp in the mountains. Sean Astin builds a fish trap after no one else can catch fish, comes back with plenty for everyone. Bacon throws the dozen fish away, saying he didn't deserve them and everyone should just go hungry. It's dramatized, but we see that in real life. The idea that someone hired for data entry can have a more measurable impact on the company's bottom line after a week at the company than a manager can who has spent years climbing the rungs can be seen as a personal affront. Why is there this gap in thinking about the world between people who look for clever shortcuts and people who support labor for labor's sake? There's a famous intro to CS lecture that has been reposted here a few times here. In it, the professor talks about the process of computer science as a step beyond algebra, it's about thinking of forumlas of processes. Thinking about processes like variables that can be modified, or as having components and properties. People who have tried programming a while often understand this intuitively, and people who haven't, don't. If you understand that, you can see how trivial it is to replicate simple processes. You can see there's no functional difference between a society that makes these calls using silicon and a society that makes these calls using meat. Mechanical turk is just another black box. It seems obviously strange to make numbers illegal or place export controls on a dozen or so lines of easily memorized code. And it's really hard or impossible to explain these positions to people who don't see the world that way. You may realize all that, but still find yourself upset at these robocalls. If that's the case, ask yourself what you're really upset about. Is it the method of the calls, or is it the calls themselves? Are you better off somehow if you are manually called at exactly the same rate with exactly the same scripts? Banning the method mainly just reserves the technique for people who own a call center. I see no reason to give that class of people additional power over everyone else. I see no reason to scapegoat automation here and tell people it's acceptable to continue to fear programs.
- creaghpatr 8y agoSounds like a bipartisan victory waiting to happen.
- aaron695 8y agoWhat's with all the anti-spam comments? This bill just says a bot must say it's a bot? Then nothing changes at all. It makes the call longer if anything. Given they don't exist I'd say this bill is fking stupid[1]. No matter what engadget or wired is saying this week, these bots that might be mistaken for human don't exist. When they do, so what? Why does a bot have to tell you they are a bot, what are people afraid of here? [1] Perhaps you could argue due to all the complaining about legislation being behind in tech, being a decade ahead is a nice change.
- josefresco 8y agoHN is funny. Most of the time we fight for anonymity, security and privacy yet here were are, demanding spoof-proof caller ID.
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y agoI think you'll find many people are not in favor of universal anonymity, and most people are in favor of strong guarantees of identity. They are separate issues and useful in different cases.
- josefresco 8y ago"most people are in favor of strong guarantees of identity" I dunno, folks on HN seem pretty opposed to this given the potential for abuse by government/business. They typically say someting like "sure it will stop spammers, but what happens when I use my phone to call a political opponent or an organization that criticizes authorities?"
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y agoYou should be able to call politicians or organizations which criticise authorities, and they should set up anonymous means of doing so (perhaps required by law). You shouldn't be able to call someone's Grandma, impersonate her son, and scam her out of her retirement.
- josefresco 8y agoI think the problem is an "anonymous tip line" just for criticizing or whistle blowing purposes is too limited in scope. There are plenty of other reasons people need anonymity where you can't setup a dedicated, anonymous system. You would also be at the mercy of those who setup the system, because you'd be calling it with your "real ID" telephone line. If you setup a general system that allows anonymity on-demand, it will be abused. I'm not advocating for or against this, just trying to work out the ethical model where citizens are protected, but criminals can be identified and prosecuted. I don't have the answer ;)
- daveFNbuck 8y agoThe title here says the bill is about telemarketing, but the bill is pretty short and I didn't see anything about telemarketing. This is just about limiting bots on "any Internet Web site, Web application, or digital application"
- anonymfus 8y agoSorry, I am not a native English speaker. I made the title by rewriting this sentence to fit into 80 characters limit: "This bill would, with certain exceptions, make it unlawful for any person to use a bot to communicate or interact with another person in California online with the intent to mislead the other person about its artificial identity for the purpose of knowingly deceiving the person about the content of the communication in order to incentivize a purchase or sale of goods or services in a commercial transaction or to influence a vote in an election." Specifically telemarketing was the only English term for "in order to incentivize a purchase or sale of goods or services in a commercial transaction" part that I recalled. Sorry if it was misleading.
- daveFNbuck 8y agoTelemarketing is specifically about marketing via phone calls. The phrase you want is "online marketing", although that is a bit longer. Almost all of the discussion in the comments thread here is about phone calls.
- anonymfus 8y agoSo is Wikipedia's definition "Telemarketing is defined as contacting, qualifying, and canvassing prospective customers using telecommunications devices such as telephone, fax, and internet" wrong? Or is it just misleadingly general?
- daveFNbuck 8y agoYeah, that definition is wrong, as evidenced by the confusion in this comment thread. I can't find a dictionary definition that matches what Wikipedia says. Every dictionary I checked [1] [2] [3] [4] specifies that telemarketing is marketing via the phone. Telemarketing is telephone marketing. [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/telemarketing https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/telemarketing [2] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/telemarketing https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/telemark... [3] https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/telemarketing https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/telemarketing [4] https://www.wordnik.com/words/telemarketing https://www.wordnik.com/words/telemarketing
- sirsuki 8y agoHow are we able to have discussions on this article when it links me to a page that says: "503 Service Unavailable": >The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later. I mean it's just text right? How hard can that be to serve in high volume? Oh did they get politically DDoS'ed?
- bdcravens 8y ago"A person using a bot shall not be liable under this section if the person discloses that it is a bot." The bill doesn't dictate how that disclosure should take place. Would using a robot emoji suffice?
- mahasvin 8y agoSo, robots have no rights to convey messages to humans? Is that so? It might be a wiser option to enhance control over ownership of robots instead.
- mythrowaway1124 8y agoWhy should robots have any rights at all?
- komali2 8y agoPresumably we would want actual artificial intelligence to have rights, right? I'm no fan of slavery over a conscious being.
- mythrowaway1124 8y agoI agree on that point! But I think robot consciousness is a really long way off.
- mahasvin 8y agoYou never read Asimov or Lem, weren't you? Robots should have rights, if they can make choices.
- petercooper 8y agoI wonder if, conversely, this could lead to the development of better "bots" where you'd be unable to tell the difference. The motive is certainly there now.
- pteredactyl 8y agoI'm for this, but how is it enforceable? Companies have teams dedicated to this and are still thwarted. I don't see California Government as leader in technology. But maybe I'm wrong. I do see them as a leader in overbudget, late, and often failing projects. So while this sounds good, I don't see it being good.
- komali2 8y agoMy theory is it finally gives teeth to enforcement? Now botting could have actual real world penalties other than just getting banned from Twitter. Not that it matters to international bots but if the USA follows...
- pteredactyl 8y agoExactly. It gives the government the ability to decide ( and act on ) what they think is and isn't a bot. Again. It sounds good. But do we trust our government to make these decisions? Do they have a track record of actually working for their 'people'? In my lifetime, sadly, no.
- dpwm 8y agoAttempts so far to ban bot accounts have resulted in a purge of real people who are critical of western governments. When Facebook decided to ban the accounts as identified by Ben Nimmo's team at the Atlantic Council, it also purged people critical of western governments' foreign policies. When this is government mandated I think you see the threat to "free speech." I'm sure this is a bonus to those pushing the react-to-bots-at-all-costs agenda, but they also seem to be the first to complain about the silencing of dissident voices they happen to agree with.
- pteredactyl 8y agoExactly. But it sounds good, so it must be, right?
- charonn0 8y agoHow do you know they're real?
- afo 8y agoHow would you treat calls where it's a sound board controlled by a human? Human or bot? If there's a way to get around the system, these guys will figure it out.
- paulie_a 8y agoBan all bots for telemarketing. And excessively fine them for violation. Abusively fine the developer that created it.
- YayamiOmate 8y agoWon't it be dead? Isn't it super easy to pull the caller's location out of jurisdiction of this law?
- linuxftw 8y agoThe only practical way to enforce this is to fine the telecom carriers that let the overseas junk calls onto their networks in the first place. Speaking of which, it would be great to have a 'no foreign origination' inbound policy. That would require VOIP providers to step up, and that seems like a very complex problem. At this point, I consider telephone communication to be almost a complete loss. We need an entirely new system.
- tomjen3 8y agoWouldn't that mean nobody can call into the US?
- daveFNbuck 8y agoThis bill does not address telephone marketing.
- teilo 8y agoThis will be just as enforceable as the Do Not Call Registry.
- janj 8y agoIs this about telemarketing? Everything in it seems to refer only to online communication over a social platform "that has 10,000,000 or more unique monthly United States visitors". Am I missing where it applies to telemarketing?
- saudioger 8y agoDon't answer your phone.
- riffic 8y agoThe EFF has written about this specific bill, and is concerned this was poorly scoped and may infringe protected speech. I would expect litigation to follow. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/05/should-ai-always-identify-itself-its-more-complicated-you-might-think https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/05/should-ai-always-ident...
- tonyquart 8y agoI have just read an article about someone who won a lawsuit against telemarketers at http://www.whycall.me/news/my-4500-payday-from-a-telemarketer/ http://www.whycall.me/news/my-4500-payday-from-a-telemarkete.... I think people could try this way to make some of them think twice before they harass us with their unwanted calls.